[171]. See Rees’s Cyclopædia, article Contagion.
[172]. Dr. Wilson Phillip’s Treatise on Febrile Diseases, vol. i. p. 433.
[173]. Researches into the Laws and Phenomena of Pestilence. London, 1821.
[174]. See Rees’s Cyclopædia, article Plague. Hancock on the Laws of Pestilence, London, 1821. Mercurialis on the Plague of Venice, in 1576. Diemerbroeck on the Plague of Nimeguen, in 1636. Mertens on the Plague of Moscow, in 1771. Chenot on that of Transylvania, in 1756. Riverii Praxis Medica, vol. 2. p. 98. Glocenius de Peste, 1611. Mead on the Plague of London, 1744. Russel on the Plague, London, 1791. This learned Physician practised at Aleppo during the Plague of 1760-1-2, and his work contains a minute account of the disease with respect to its origin, progress, and decline: it is considered the best medical account of any individual Plague extant. A History of all the most remarkable Plagues upon record, by Noah Webster, of New York. Considerations on the nature of Pestilence, published as periodical papers, by the Freethinker, 1721. The City Remembrancer, compiled from the best sources, chiefly from the Papers of Gideon Harvey. This is the best account of the Plague of London. Kephale’s Medela Pestilentiæ, 1665. Echar’s History of Plagues. Gaetan Sotira, Mem. sur la Peste, observée en Egypt. Pappon’s Epoques memorables de la Peste, 1801.
[175]. Cullen defines Pestis to be “Typhus maxime contagiosa, cum summa debilitate—Incerto morbi die eruptio Bubonum vel Anthracum.” Nosolog. Method. Gen. 30.
[176]. Op. citat.
[177]. See Sir Arthur Brooke Faulkener’s Treasise on the Plague. The remarkable fact, mentioned by Dr. Samoilowitz, that all the assistant Surgeons in the hospitals at Moscow took the Plague, while the Physicians who only walked among the sick, but carefully avoided contact, generally escaped, affords a strong proof of the greater facility with which actual contact communicates the infection. This work of Dr. Samoilowitz (sur la Peste) has more than a hundred pages filled with proofs of its contagious influence; Dr. Granville also, in his examination before the Committee of the House of Commons, gave some very interesting instances, in which the poison could only have been conveyed by touch.
[178]. Fomites, or substances imbued with the contagion from the bodies of the sick, are supposed to retain their infectious quality an indefinite length of time, and even to communicate the disease more readily than the persons of the infected.
[179]. Results of an investigation respecting Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, including Researches in the Levant concerning the Plague. By Charles Maclean, M.D. London, 1817.
[180]. It is noticed by writers long before Dr. Maclean: see “Distinct notions of the Plague, 1722. Dale Ingram on the Plagues that have appeared since 1346; and Plague no Contagious Disease.” The following is the story to which these authors allude.—It appears that Pope Paul III, about the year 1747, commissioned his legate, Cardinal Montè, to fabricate some pretext for removing the celebrated Council of Trent, which was then sitting in debate on the abuses of the ecclesiastical power, to some town within the Papal territory. An epidemic fever, it was said, then prevailed at Trent: many of the bishops became alarmed, and fled; some, if not all, on the Emperor’s side, raised their voices against the plot; but Fracastorius, Physician of the Council, aided the imposition with all the zeal of a devoted Catholic, and the Council was accordingly translated to Bologna. From this time, Dr. Maclean asserts, it became almost heretical to doubt of the contagious nature of Plague; and the error, chiefly because it was sanctioned by the sovereign Pontiff’s authority in the first instance, has been propagated in christendom, as a point of medical orthodoxy, and continued down to the present time.—Maclean, loco citato,—Hancock on Pestilence, p. 11.